01/30/2017
A long explanation
While we still do not have anything exciting to announce we feel that we owe all of you some information. First we want to sincerely thank all of you who have taken the time to follow us, write to us, make comments and somehow support our idea. We also thank the negative replies because someone took the time to write them.
When we first launched this web page, in October 2014, we were positively moving forward. We had the site, the developer and the funding. It would have been a build out of about 18 months for phase one. This development was quietly worked on the entire Spring and Summer of 2014.
Once the story made the news the Mayor of Johnston quickly put the brakes on it. The confusing part is that in his original statement he thought it was a great idea but quickly turned against it.
The balance of this letter will be long but we will try to explain the realities.
Since that time we have been working our way through one city after another trying to make this work. When it seemed that it was doable we made an announcement. We apologize for that, because it raised false hopes, including ours.
The cities involved all welcomed us and the idea, but were not able to provide the site needed. We toyed with some ideas of Massachusetts cities that bordered RI but that would not be a RI water park. To clarify: we did not ask the cities for land. We were trying to purchase. There were simply no parcels of land that would work
Unless a person is knowledgeable, related to commercial property in RI, they wouldn’t realize that there are no parcels of land that work properly. It was hard for us to believe but we couldn’t find any!
Please note that the old Rocky Point property is not and has not been available and also would not make a good location.
After the original plan fell apart we made our rounds to many other cities, and as you know, we tried to make it happen several times. There was always some immovable obstacle that prevented it from working. We spent heavily for feasibility studies for each location, and land studies subject to feasibility.
We agree that at a casual look there seem to be multiple locations available but there are not. For your benefit we will list, by priority, some of what is necessary?
• A cooperative city that wants the development.
• At least 20 usable acres. That is after setbacks, wet lands and other non-buildable areas. Relatively flat so it does not burn too much site development dollars.
• A price that does not exceed $100K per acre.
• Proper zoning and permits including height restrictions. This ruled out Warwick due to proximity of airport.
• Easily accessible location central to a large enough market to support the Park. It needs to be centrally located in a densely populated area of about 50 mile radius.
• Access to utilities is important. We can work with well water if high enough volume wells, but high voltage 3 phase electricity is a must and city sewer or high capacity septic is necessary.
• We won’t bore you with more details but rest assured that a workable site has to clear a lot of hurtles. We simply haven’t found one and have worked with a multitude of brokers over the years.
Please be aware that the country’s multitude of amusement parks and water parks never built on Prime land. Mostly on agricultural land. Including Disney World (originally agricultural). The land may have become much more valuable as time passed and as cities sprawled; but it was not expensive at the beginning.
As a last note, we are still keeping our eye open for an opportunity but do not have anything new to tell you about at this time.
Thank you,
